Life on Mars

by Jonathan Strahan (Ed)

  Human error? Technical glitch? For two years, we’d gone over every phase of the mission, tens of thousands of parts, maneuvers, systems—anything could go wrong at any time. We had reams of contingency plans. Every snafu had some kind of back-up. Except this.

  I zipped up my flight suit. “You have to tell Tom,” I said. Another protocol. Information that might affect the crew or the mission had to be relayed to the captain.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait till tomorrow? I need to tell Pete first.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “Okay.” She hesitated. “There’s only one option. You know that.”

  I nodded. If one crew member becomes unfit to serve, the mission is aborted. It had happened once on the space station. Appendicitis. The whole crew had to evacuate back to Earth. And that wasn’t possible for us, not in an orbital transit. Earth wouldn’t be in the same position as when we’d left, and we didn’t have enough fuel to realign. I had to be fit for duty. “Tomorrow,” I said.

  My bunk was the only private place. I pulled the curtain across and leaned against the bulkhead, my hand on my still-flat belly. Chandra was right. And, in theory, that was a choice I’d always supported. So why did I feel like I had to pick—my dreams or my future?

  This was an exploration mission. Seventeen months on the surface. We didn’t have the supplies or the technology or the infrastructure to start colonizing. That was decades down the road, and only if we succeeded.

  When the communication window opened, I sent a message to my husband. I told him what had happened and what I had to do. The fourteen-minute delay for his reply seemed endless. And when it arrived, the words on the screen surprised me. “Can’t let you do that, Zoë,” it said.

  Before I could type my reply, the next message arrived. That one was from CNN, asking for confirmation.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Tom and the rest of the crew stared at me as the queue backed up with message after message. Mission Control was furious. Two different generals sent conflicting orders from millions of miles away.

  But the public response was instant and overwhelming. News sites headlined, WELCOME, FIRST MARTIAN BABY! Within an hour, I was the hot topic of blogs, newscasts, and water cooler discussions all over the globe. A contest offered a million dollars for the person who named THE FIRST CITIZEN OF SPACE. It was a circus—and NASA had never been so popular.

  The furor showed no signs of dying down, but at least Earth continued to rotate, and we lost the comm signal after a few hours. I went to my bunk, but didn’t sleep much. When I got up, the screen held a terse communiqué from Mission Control: “Seventh crew member authorized.”

  I was relieved. I was scared. The rest of the crew did their best to hide their feelings. An order was an order.

  The Surgeon General issued a statement. Barring any complications, the likelihood of transit-oriented problems in the next six months was low. The fetus was in a water-filled sac, exactly the sort of environment the crew had trained in for zero-g. As long as radiation levels were closely monitored, she believed a full-term pregnancy was entirely possible. Deceleration and landing, however, would require further consideration.

  Would I still fit in my landing couch? What about my pressure suit—it wasn’t designed to stretch. I’d never paid much attention in home economics, but the suit was just engineering, and I was able to make some alterations.

  A few days shy of my eighth month, we began the descent to the surface. The baby kicked the whole way down. Fortunately, the landing was textbook: no system failures, no injuries, no unexpected terrain. And out the porthole, we could see the Sacagawea a hundred meters away, plumes of vapor wafting from its lower vents. Our ride home.

  That first night, Rajuk broke out the bottle of whiskey he’d smuggled on board, and we toasted our places in history. I drank my share; all the medical texts said it wouldn’t make much difference, not at that stage. No one knew what difference cosmic radiation and zero-g had already made.

  The baby and the planet were both terrae incognitae.

  I had studied Mars for more than twenty years. I wasn’t prepared for how eerily beautiful and utterly alien it was. Everything was shades of reddish brown, no greens or blues. The horizon was too close, the sky too uniform, the lighting flat. Daylight was butterscotch, as if it were always afternoon, half an hour before dusk. At night, the two small, lumpy moons rose into the starry blackness, Phobos slowly in the west, tiny Deimos in the east.

  I was, of course, restricted to the ship. For two weeks I had to watch as the others took turns out on the dusty metallic surface, kicking up puffs of iron oxide with every step. I could feel the floor vibrate as they opened the cargo bay, unloaded the rover, began to set up a base. It took a full day to anchor the Conestoga, turning her from a spaceship into a permanent habitat, for us, for future crews.

  We had all cross-trained in each others’ fields, so I was busy checking schematics, logging soil samples, monitoring pressure levels and hatch seals. I gave hand signals through the porthole as Tom and Paolo unrolled my inflatable greenhouse and moved the equipment in. As soon as they connected it to the Hab and its atmosphere, I started my own work.

  The first seedlings were unfurling in the hydroponic tank when my water broke.

  Chandra had set up the medical facility as soon as we landed; everything was ready. Like the Russians’ rats’, which gestated in zero-g, my labor was long and slow. The gravity of Mars—only one third Earth’s—meant less strain, but less pull when I pushed. Finally, on day 266 of the mission, Mars day 52, I heard a loud, strong cry.

  “It’s a girl,” Chandra said a moment later. I saw a red, wrinkled face, then she was on the counter, being weighed and measured and tested. “Only five pounds, a little underweight, but otherwise she seems remarkably healthy.” Chandra laid her on my chest.

  A few days later, a woman in Indiana would win a million dollars for naming my baby Virginia Dare Morrison—the first child born in the New World. But as she lay there, suckling for the first time, I murmured, “Podkayne of Mars,” and we just called her Poddy.

  The Conestoga had not been stocked with infant necessities, so we had to make do. T-shirts were diapers. Archie made a mobile from some color-coded spare parts and dental floss, dangling it above the hammock that hung in my bunk. A blanket became a snugglie; while I worked, I carried her like a papoose from another, older frontier.

  I breast-fed her for the first eight months, no extra draw on the closely measured rations. She got sponge baths, just like the rest of us. When she was teething, her cries filled the Hab—the bunks were only soundproofed enough to offer a bit of privacy—and the rest of the crew grumbled about lost sleep. But they watched her when it was my turn in the rotation to be outside, and she heard lullabies in four different languages.

  Martian gravity is kind to toddlers. At thirteen months, Poddy massed eighteen pounds, but her chubby legs only had to support six as she pulled herself up and began to walk. It’s impossible to childproof a spacecraft, but we blocked off the lab and the stairs to the upper level of the Hab, and strung tether cords across the hatchways. She could climb like a monkey.

  She bounced and hopped the length of the greenhouse, laughing at the top of her lungs and bounding about in a way no Earth baby could. I sent vids to Pete, and they were replayed everywhere; a dance called the Poddy Hop was the new craze. Plans were made for a homecoming tour the next year: FIRST MARTIAN RETURNS.

  But that was a problem, said the doctors.

  Martian gravity might turn out to be sufficient for healthy growth. No one knew. Poddy’s stats were being studied by scientists everywhere, and would provide the data for future missions. But travel in zero-g was not a possibility, not at her age. She was still developing—bones and muscles, neurons and connections. She would never recover from seven months in free fall.

  Every member of the crew already had muscle-mass and bone loss from the trip out. I’d known from day one that once the miss
ion was over, I’d spend the next two years in hospitals and gyms trying to get as much of it back as I could.

  For Poddy, they said, the loss would be irreversible. Mission Control advised: further study needed.

  A month before takeoff, I got their final verdict.

  Poddy could not return to Earth.

  If she did, even as an adult, she would never walk again. She would be crippled by the physics of her home planet, always in excruciating pain, crushed by the mass of her own body. Her lungs might collapse, her heart might not take the strain.

  “We had not planned for children,” Mission Control’s message ended. “We’re sorry.”

  I read the message three times, then picked her up and kissed her hair. I’d always dreamed of living on Mars.

  Future missions would bring supplies, they promised. Clothes, shoes, a helmet, a modified pressure suit with expandable sections and room to grow. From now on, they would carry extra milk and vitamins, educational materials, toys and games. Engineers had begun working on a small-scale rover. Whatever she needed.

  The next ship should arrive in seven months.

  Tom reassigned duties for a five-person crew. By the time the Sacagawea was ready for launch, Poddy was talking. Just simple words. Mama, Hab, juice. She waved her tiny fingers at the porthole as her aunt and uncles boarded: Bye-bye Chanda, bye-bye Tom. Bye-bye.

  We would never see them again.

  Like my great-grandmother, I was a pioneer woman, alone on the frontier. Isolated, self-sufficient by necessity. Did it matter, I wondered as I heated up our supper, whether it was a hundred miles of prairie, a thousand miles of ocean, or millions of miles of space that separated me from everything and everyone I had known?

  I read to Poddy, after the meal. A picture book, uploaded a week before, drawings in primary colors of things she would never see: tree, cat, house, father. For her, Earth was make-believe, a fantasy world with funny green grass and the wrong color sky

  On the first of two hundred cold, black nights, Deimos and Phobos low in the sky, I sat by the porthole and cuddled my daughter, whispering as I rocked her to sleep.

  Goodnight, Poddy.

  Goodnight, moons.

  ELLEN KLAGES is the author of two acclaimed novels for younger readers: The Green Glass Sea, which won the Scott O’Dell Award, the New Mexico Book Award, and the Lopez Award, and White Sands, Red Menace, which won the California and New Mexico Book Awards. Her short stories have been published in eight countries and have been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Campbell awards. Her story “Basement Magic” won a Nebula in 2005. She lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.

  Her Web site is www.ellenklages.com.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Seeking inspiration for this story, I ate a Mars bar, reread The Martian Chronicles and Little House on the Prairie, then had lunch with a rocket scientist.

  THE TASTE OF PROMISES

  RAchel Swirsky

  They approached the settlement at dusk. Tiro switched the skipper to silent mode, grateful he wouldn’t have to spend another night strapped in, using just enough fuel to stay warm and breathing.

  A message from Tiro’s little brother, Eo, scrolled across his visor. Are we there yet?

  Tiro rolled his eyes at Eo’s impatience. Just about, he subvocalized, watching his suit’s internal processor translate the words into text.

  Is it someplace good? asked Eo.

  I think so. Be quiet and let me check it out.

  It was a big settlement. Three vast domes rose above the landscape like glass hills. Semipermanent structures clustered around them, warehouses and vehicle storage buildings constructed from frozen dirt. Light illuminated the footpaths, creating a faintly glowing labyrinth between buildings.

  For such a big place, it seemed strangely deserted. There should have been volunteer patrols, weapon caches, watchtowers where settlers would take turns on duty to scan for thieves or poachers or, worse, gang convoys studded with skulls.

  On Mars, civilization only extended as far as the pressure seals on the domes of official colonies sponsored by Earth governments. Settlers who left the government shelters gained the freedom to claim homesteads from the vast tracts of empty land, but they lost the protection of settled society. It could be a hard life on the wild frontier. Everyone feared the gang convoys that sold whole settlements into slavery, slaughtering those who weren’t strong enough to work in the mines.

  Tiro eyed the settlement nervously. He messaged Eo: Do you see any security?

  After a pause, his brother replied, A few charge guns in the domes.

  Nothing else? Too weird.

  Maybe their God doesn’t like weapons.

  Maybe.

  Tiro could explore more after nightfall, but in the meantime, he decided to investigate the warehouses. No one stored anything valuable outside, but Tiro was skilled at living off things other people didn’t value.

  He parked the skipper, sealed his helmet onto his suit, and got out. Nearby, there was an igloo made from frozen dirt. He ducked inside; crates filled the cramped space from floor to ceiling, leaving Tiro barely any room to stand. He pulled down the nearest crate and braced himself against the wall to pry it open. His jaw dropped.

  Eo? he sent. Did you check all their computers for security?

  Yeah. The word flashed resentfully.

  You sure?

  Eo inserted a picture of a kid blowing a raspberry.

  Sorry. I’m just having trouble believing we struck gold.

  You found gold???

  Food! wrote Tiro. Crates and crates of frozen rations.

  Eo sent a picture of a dancing kid. Tiro grinned.

  Tiro hauled the crate back to the skipper. A few trips back and forth and he’d be set. He could even sell the extra and buy rooms for the rest of the trip.

  His thoughts were full of good food and warm beds when he caught sight of four men clustered around the warehouse entrance, their faceplates reflecting the darkening sky so he couldn’t make out their faces. I thought there was no security! he messaged Eo.

  There wasn’t!! Eo messaged back.

  Tiro flattened against the wall.

  What’re you gonna do? asked Eo.

  I don’t know, said Tiro. Shut up and let me think.

  Tiro figured he could make it the ten meters back to the skipper, but he doubted the skipper could outrun the settlement’s vehicles. His only option was to get out of sight. Slowly, he started scooting along the wall.

  By his second step, he knew he’d been caught. “Did you see that?” one man mumbled to another. The second reacted with fighter’s instincts, whipping out his flashlight like a gun.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded, voice gruff through the suit’s transmitter. “Are you a scout? Who are you leading here?”

  Tiro winced as bright light shone into his eyes. Get out! he messaged Eo. Quick! Get into their systems.

  But—

  Go!

  The man with the flashlight crouched like a cat and leapt. Dust flew into the air as he landed beside Tiro. “Who are you?” he repeated.

  Tiro shrank away. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

  The man twisted Tiro’s arm painfully behind his back. “Go on. Keep lying. We’ll get the truth either way.”

  The man with the flashlight was their leader. The others called him Jirair.

  They marched Tiro into the smallest of the three domes. “Nothing to see! Get home!” Jirair bellowed. Settlers flashed alarmed looks their way before dispersing.

  They halted in front of a squat building, metal beams glistening in the newly fallen darkness. One man removed Tiro’s helmet. Another opened a reinforced door and shoved him inside. He tumbled headfirst into the dark, falling against the wall with a thud.

  Someone switched on a light. The dank cell was floored with dirt. Manacles gleamed on the wall.

  Tiro tried to edge away. Jirair gestured to his men. They chain
ed Tiro’s wrists and ankles.

  Jirair pulled off his helmet. Underneath, he looked surprisingly young, maybe twenty years old. His scarlet hair stuck out in stylized spikes.

  “Get the nerve ripper.”

  “The nerve ripper!” repeated a man leaning against the wall. “I love the nerve ripper.”

  “Think he’ll be able to walk afterward?” asked the short man beside him.

  The first one laughed. “Depends on how much he lies!”

  The man who’d thrown Tiro inside the cell fidgeted uncomfortably. “Come on, Jirair. He’s just a kid.”

  “Just a kid?” Jirair turned, lips peeled back to show his teeth. “Gangs use kids as scouts all the time. You want that to happen here?”

  The man shook his head silently.

  “Then get the nerve ripper,” he repeated. The man rushed away.

  Tiro struggled. His chains clanged as they reached their full extension. He tapped the bud implanted in his wrist that let Eo monitor his life signs. Tiro used it when he wanted Eo’s attention—but this time, there was no answering pulse.

  Eo was safe. That was what Tiro wanted, of course, but it didn’t make him feel any less alone.

  Jirair paced in front of Tiro. “I’ll ask again. Who are you leading here?”

  “I’m just a scavenger,” Tiro said.

  “Petty criminals know to stay away from us. You’re no scavenger. Why are you here? Did you come to steal our seeds?”

  “Your . . . seeds?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New Virginia.”

  “Who did you bring with you?”

  Tiro’s heart pounded. “No one.”

  “No one?”

  “No one!”

  Jirair shot him a disdainful look. “Only fools travel alone on Mars.” He burst into motion, punching the wall in a sudden fury. “You poachers! You think your lives are the only ones that matter! Do you think we don’t know what you’re up to?”